musical musings from the frozen north:
torontopia, mont royal city and kawartha kottages

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Pre-Polaris, day two: Braids, Caribou

The 10th Polaris
Music Prize gala is next Monday, Sept. 21, at the Carlu in Toronto, where 11 jurors locked in
a room will decide which one of these 10 artists will get $50,000 and a gig
with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2016. All other nominees receive $3,000.

Every day this week I’ll look
at two of the shortlisted albums, assess their chances, and celebrate two
albums that didn’t make the short
list—or, in some cases, even the long
list.

First off, I simply cannot
believe how much the piano chords that open this album remind me of the
breakdown in Chalk Circle’s “April Fool” (which is almost 30 years old, by the
way). Then there’s the fact that I keep hearing echoes of the Cocteau Twins. But
that’s just this geezer talking. Everything else about Braids is firmly rooted
in the 21st century, as this trio becomes increasingly more
electronic, anchored by the ace drummer Austin Tufts. I want to give the Polaris
money to that guy alone, he’s that good.

What Braids do as a band I
find admirable, but it’s incredibly heady. It seems torn between a band that
deals primarily in abstracts and a band that wants to write direct pop songs.
I’d rather they dive off the deep end and get as weird as they want to. When
they get political, as they do on the much-praised feminist anthem “Miniskirt,”
it comes off more like an earnest sociology student’s first attempt at
songwriting, rather than the seasoned veterans Braids are at this point. It’s
clunky, both melodically and lyrically. The rest of the album fares much better:
“Taste Revised” proves their pop mettle, even if it sounds a lot like, um,
Sarah McLachlan. “Getting Tired” is lovely. “Sore Eyes” is similar to Blue
Hawaii, the side project for vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston.

Now, a Caribou remix of this
entire record—that might be something. I know they already share a lot of the
same synths.

The chances:

Strong. This is the kind of
heavily layered album that might convince jurors with repeated listens. It’s
also the brainiest record on this list. And jurors are nothing if not huge
nerds.

Caribou – Our Love (Merge)

The album:

I’ve loved just about
everything Dan Snaith has ever done, dating back to his 2001 debut, Start
Breaking My Heart. And yet this is the first time he’s left me relatively cold.
Why?

It might be that the opening
track and lead singe, “Can’t Do Without You,” seems like the slightest of ideas
in search of a song; once you’ve heard the three-second hook, very little else
happens for the remaining four minutes. It might be that the album’s
centrepiece, “Second Chance,” featuring Jessy Lanza on vocals, has this odd
phase-shifting effect that actually makes me physically nauseous, and the synth
tone, which appears on several other tracks, I find especially grating. Purely
subjective, I realize. But several other tracks also fall flat, which is odd
for a guy who doesn’t usually pad his albums with filler (he does, however,
release plenty of B-sides, where he’s released as much music as can be found on
his albums).

I’ll happily take four tracks
here for posterity: “All I Ever Need,” “Our Love,” “Mars,” “Your Love Will Set
You Free,” the latter of which makes this one of two albums on this year’s list
that fulfills Polaris’s Owen Pallett quota.

The chances:

Slim. No previous winner has
won again. Now that Polaris is 10 years old, that may well change in the near
future. Not for this album, though.

Two of the should’ve, could’ve
beens:

Bahamas – Is Afie (Brushfire)

The album:

What’s that, you say? Yet
another singer-songwriter from the land of Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young and
Leonard Cohen who writes beautiful songs and sings them in a cracked late night
voice and pulls in some string sections and female backing vocalists and whose
guitar skills are better appreciate live than on his subtle recordings? Surely
we’ve heard this story before. And yet, so precious few do this as well as Afie
Jurvanen, and this is his finest album to date.

My August 2014 review:

Another singer/songwriter album, another dozen love songs—except
that this one sets the bar considerably higher, right from the opening lyrics:
“I held your breath inside my lungs for days / and I saw myself as just one of
many waves / when I knew I’d become the ocean’s slave / I just stayed.”

Afie Jurvanen recorded his first two (highly acclaimed) albums
in the space of a week each. On this, his third, Jurvanen spent a whole summer
in a studio. His love of late-night sessions fuelled by Willie Nelson and wine
hasn’t changed; nor has his modest reluctance to showcase his skills as a
soloist. But the extra attention to detail is obvious in every carefully
constructed track, from the lovely vocal arrangements to the occasional string
section to just the right amount of space left inside every song: Bahamas is
all about the subtle charms, the soft sell.

Qualifier: there are two
total stinkers on this otherwise flawless record. One is the single “All the Time,” the whining guitar riff of which wore out its welcome by the third time
I’d heard it. The other is “Record Store Girl,” which is far too cutesy and out
of character—or maybe this song just makes me feel self-conscious and
uncomfortable because, just like some cliché devotee of High Fidelity, I’ve
always had an inherent crush on just about any female employee of a record
store I’ve ever met. Doesn’t mean I’d write a song about it, though.

Excellent question. This was
the first album of the Polaris qualifying period I heard that I felt was a
shoo-in.

Amelia Curran – They Promised
You Mercy (Six Shooter)

The album: I want to
transform this album into a blanket and wrap it around me in my darkest
moments. Such is the power of Curran’s voice and her songs. My November
2014 review:

The East Coast’s Amelia Curran has been stopping listeners dead
in their tracks ever since her 2008 album War Brides brought her to national
attention. Until now, her approach has been relatively bare bones; this, on the
other hand, is a full-blown rock record by comparison, full of ringing electric
guitars, powerful drums, strings (by Drew Jurecka, of Jill Barber’s band),
horns (by Bryden Baird, of Feist’s band), lap steel, accordion, and some
stunning jazz piano and organ work by Aaron Davis (Holly Cole Trio).

If you’re a folkie singer/songwriter looking to expand your
sound, you’d be hard pressed to find a better producer than ex-Rheostatic
Michael Phillip Wojewoda, a man who’s worked in almost every genre of music and
knows how to capture dynamics. Your song that sounds perfect with just your own
stunning voice and minimal guitar accompaniment sounds even better with what
Wojewoda decides to add and how he does it.

Curran herself is a master of empathy, the kind of voice you
need to hear in your darkest moments, the kind of voice that has lived through
mood disorders and anxiety (the topic of a current public awareness campaign
she’s spearheaded) and reaches out in song.

Here, with the help of many friends, a variety of tempos and
textures ensure that it’s not a dour affair. It’s much more than that: it’s a
powerful record by a major artist.

Listen to “I Am the Night,”
“Song on the Radio,” “Somebody Somewhere” or “Coming For You” or “Never Say
Goodbye”—hell, just listen to the whole damn thing.

Why it didn’t even make the
long list: Total mystery. She’s made the Polaris long list before, back in 2010.
She has a powerful indie (Six Shooter, home to last year’s winner, Tagaq)
behind her. She has Wojewoda behind the boards. She made news with her mental
health campaign. She has heaps of ECMAs and Juno nods and is up for four
Canadian Folk Awards in November. And yet she was snubbed at Polaris for what
is her finest record to date? Weird. As Joni would say: "Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm."